Just Before Dawn
by Katie Day
Summary: Leon Kennedy finds himself assigned to a case involving a girl who claims something horrible is going to happen at an old estate in Italy. She refuses to talk to anyone at the organization so it's up to Leon to get the full story out of her. Leon x Fiona


"Sir?"

"Yes, Margaery?"

"There's a call for you on line 2. It's a Miss Alissandra Trenn." A heavy sigh sifted through the other end of the phone.

"Put her into voice mail. That's the eighth time this month. If she calls again just automatically put her into voice mail next time."

"Yes, sir."

With a flick of her nimble fingers, the secretary had whipped the caller into the message box without so much as another word.

"What was that about?"

Margaery glanced over at Leon who had just entered the office and an instinctive smile brushed over her face.

"Good morning, Leon. That was nothing important, just the PD forwarding another paranoid to our office."

"They must have given her the number for a reason," he replied as he plopped down on one of the overstuffed waiting room couches.

"Come on, Leon. You worked for the police before. You know if anything is even slightly out of their league they just throw it our way," she replied, brushing some of her caramel colored hair from her face. "But then again, you only worked there for a day, right? Before all the unpleasantness?"

"You know it seems to follow me these days," he mused with a crooked smile. Not only had Leon been swept up in the mess with Racoon City, but his first assignment with his new employers had been nothing short of bizarre. A simple mission to retrieve the president's daughter had turned into another all-out freak show and plan for world domination. What was with people these days? Couldn't they be a little more creative? He had been granted a small vacation after the entire incident and plenty of honorable recognition for his deeds. Ever since he had been sort of glad for the smaller jobs he'd been given. He felt he could handle just about anything at this point but he didn't necessarily want to. "Any clue what the big-giant-head has in store for me now?"

Margaery gave Leon a jokingly condescending smile. She really should have scolded him, she thought, but it was so true. Miller was one of those older, balding men who's head shone a little too bright to ignore sometimes. Leon, on the other hand, was a bit too laid back for his own good. But who could blame him?

It was then that the door opened and a familar colleague stepped out, adjusting her glasses. Hunnigan always looked quite clean cut and proper - ever serious and business-like. No matter how many jokes Leon attempted to pass her way she was never phased and often rebuffed him in an ego-brusing manner. The former member of the RPD was determined that one day he would make her crack a smile.

"Hey, it's my favorite communications officer," he said, looking up at her.

"Good morning, Leon. Please remove your feet from the sofa," she replied, without even looking up from the paperwork in her hand as she approached him. Leon huffed and whirled to plant his feet back on the floor. Hunnigan promptly sat herself across from him and sat a folder on the coffee table. "This is your new assignment. As of late we've been receiving numerous calls from a young woman named Alissandra Trenn. She keeps saying that she is trying to warn us of something bad that is going to happen involving an old estate in northern Italy."

"Was this the girl that called this morning?" Leon asked. "I thought the chief was just ignoring her...? Figured her claims were unfounded and paranoid?"

"Basically. However, considering the urgency and frequency of her calls we thought we should at least investigate it. Get some background information. Except we have some problems with the information she's given us."

"Like what?"

"She won't tell us what she thinks is going to happen - in fact she says she doesn't exactly know."

"That's a whole hell of a lot to go on. It sounds like a wild goose chase to me...so why are we following up on it?"

"She's continued to call us despite everything. We've tried to get her to come in or meet with someone so we might interrogate her personally. Maybe she's completely mad - and if that's the case she should be taken care of. The only problem is, she refuses to meet with us."

"Why?" Leon asked with a cock of his head to the side.

"She claims that horrible things happened to her at the site and she has entered the witness protection program to avoid being found." Hunnigan peered at Leon through her glasses as she pushed them up her nose again.

"So, what am I supposed to do about it?" he asked. "If she won't come in and we can't get any further information, why don't we just discard the case?"

"Because, we can't have her continue her calling sprees here. Even the PD has complained of the harassment. But you can't arrest someone for calling for help. So, that's where YOU come in. If she won't come to us we'll go to her."

"What...? You expect me to go and stalk this girl and force her into talking?"

"Pretty much...but let's not use such predatory terms, hm?"

"Okay - so say I'm for this insane ploy," Leon huffed. "How do you expect me to locate her?"

"You forget who you're working for, Leon. We have records. We know where everyone is, has been, or will be."

"You can be really creepy sometimes, Hunnigan."

"I'll be your contact on this one," she said, ignoring his jab and pushing the file towards him on the table. "The sooner we get the full story or admission out of this girl the sooner this nonsense will be over with." With that, she rose and retreated into the back room again, leaving Leon with the papers. He picked up the folder and thumbed through it, absently gazing at the photo of the girl paperclipped to the information on her wherabouts.

"Good luck," Margaery offered with a shrug and an apologetic smile as he exited the office and headed for the elevator.

_What a bunch of crap. _He could understand them giving him minor cases for awhile, but he didn't expect to turn into an errand boy. If this girl didn't want to talk to anybody then what made them think that he could get her to do anything more? As the elevator descended he flipped open the folder again to glimpse the picture. Tilting his head, he studied it a little more thoroughly. It was a candid shot, taken of her when she was out in public somewhere. She was looking down at something white - a dog, maybe? A large one. It was hard to tell for sure with the black and white image. Dismissing it, he folded things back up and exited the elevator when it reached the bottom floor.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooo

After returning home to dress more casually for his search, Leon headed out to check the locales where Alyssandra was said to most commonly be. He didn't see her at the library, at the cafe where she apparently worked, or at her apartment. He was sort of glad for that last one. He felt a little weird about confronting the girl at her home. The daylight had just begun to burn off into an early sunset as he headed for the local park. Maybe she came here to walk that dog in the photo? The papers said she frequented the area often. There were still a few people out walking and jogging, so Leon parked himself on a bench to sit and survey the area.

As the hours drug on with no sight of her, Leon found his mind beginning to wander. Thoughts of Racoon City and the Los Illuminados clouded his mind as they often did. The latest portion of his life had really been a living nightmare. It was a wonder he hadn't turned into a complete nutcase. Maybe he should take a longer vacation and get away to some place completely new. Maybe Antarctica? Meh. With his luck there would probably be plaga zombies made of ice developing a new virus there or something. His eyes gazed upward absently. Maybe he would go to the moon. That sounded...sort of safe. He barely noticed as the street lights started to flicker on around him, and was only jarred from his thoughts when he realized his foot was feeling kind of wet. Within a second he snapped from his space-out and realized there was a dog pissing on his shoe.

"Hey!" he exclaimed and stood up to shoo the dog. The animal whirled and looked at him as if quite satisfied with himself and barked with a wag of his tail.

"Hewie! No!" came an exclamation as his owner jogged over. "I'm so sorry, he doesn't normally do that!" She stood in front of the dog and shook her finger at him. "No!" Leon attempted to ignore the fact that his sock was currently soaking up the dog-water. This was her. It was an exact match - complete with dog and all. Hewie, as she called him, whined when the girl repremanded him. He wasn't easily daunted, though, and soon reared up and put his paws against Leon's chest, nearly tumbling him. He wasn't a huge dog, by any means, but still rather hefty.

"Feeling friendly, I guess," Leon mentioned, taking the high road and petting the dog on the head. A certain fondness arose despite the situation - perhaps because the white german shepherd reminded him of a dog that had helped him out once before.

"I'm very sorry. He's not normally so rude," the pale blonde replied, clasping her hands and pressing them to her lips.

"I'm sure he didn't mean anything bad," Leon offered as Hewie sank to his haunches and regarded him with some more happy wags of the tail. Alyssandra's face gave way to a tad bit of relief.

"No, I'm sure. He's usually quite well behaved." Leon nodded, running through his mind as to how he might take this situation where it needed to go. _Find the girl, check. Initate converstation with the girl, check. Get peed on in the process, _sooo _not check...but happened anyway. _Then a thought came to him.

"Do you know anywhere close that I might use the bathroom and maybe get some coffee?" he asked idly. As helpful as she seemed to be Alyssandra nodded.

"Of course. I actually work at the little place just down the way. If you want, I could let you use the restroom there. I have a key."

"That would be great, thanks," he said with a light smile. Confident that she was making amends, the girl turned and ushed her dog along with her.

"Right this way," she gestured. Leon nodded and began to follow, trying to ignore it when his shoe squished beneath his foot. _Very much obliged, Miss Fiona Belli_, he mused.


End file.
